


the moment of truth in your lies

by Itch



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: M/M, Non Explicit Sex, Sort Of, hanahaki, happy ending!, hurt comfort, no beta we die like Glenn, sylvix - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-03
Updated: 2019-11-03
Packaged: 2021-01-22 11:42:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,911
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21301487
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Itch/pseuds/Itch
Summary: Sylvain coughs up flowers. He won't tell the person he's in love with though, because he wouldn't love him back. Why would he?
Relationships: Sylvain Jose Gautier/Felix Hugo Fraldarius
Comments: 6
Kudos: 162





	the moment of truth in your lies

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Natendo](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Natendo/gifts).

> so uh natendo on twitter posted some hanahaki art and i needed to try and write it for once so heres it. also the song lyrics are from iris by the goo goo dolls hence also the flowers theyre hacking up

_ And I’d give up forever to touch you  _

_ Cause I know that you feel me somehow _

Sylvain wiped his mouth of the dribble of blood and saliva with the back of his hand, and spat into the waste paper basket that had been tucked under his desk. He had only been back at the monastery for less than three hours, and he was glad his room was relatively how he had left it, barring the thick coating of dust over everything, and the family of bats he had shooed from the rafters. The bin was still filled with old school notes, from when he has drafted and redrafted essays for Byleth about lance technique and horse care. His handwriting used to be so neat, looping G’s and Y’s, with tall B’s and H’s, but now it was a spider’s dance across the pages, written as quickly as he could, often whilst on horseback, sending messages as the crow flies to alert their armies of Empire movement’s. He adopted the position of scout with ease, mostly because it not only kept him out of the main line of fire, but meant he was alone with his horse most of the time. He enjoyed that. He could dip in and out of villages, spend nights in inn’s with anyone he wanted, and leave before dawn. No one to miss him, no one to come home to.

It was nearly five years to the day they had all left the monastery for war, a dragon rampage crushing walls and dorms, sending people scattering like thrown marbles. He huffed a sigh, pinching the bridge of his nose as another wave of nausea overtook him and he hunched over to cough up a few more crushed purple petals, slick with drool and stuck together in a disgusting clump. With each day it was getting worse. At the back of his mind, he hoped Mercedes or Annette, or even Flayn, had remembered the oath they’d made as classmates, and would be there at dawn tomorrow so he could ask them for help. He knew what he was sick with though. He had read about this before. It was in the library on a free day when he’d holed up in there to escape the rain and bickering girls, sitting in the more comfortable chair by the marbled fireplace, reading by it’s flickering golden light. 

They called it Hanahaki disease, where the ‘victim’ - he hadn’t realised how apropos that term was till now - coughed up flowers and petals as a blossoming plant took root in their lungs. The victim was someone suffering from unrequited love, and eventually the flower grew too large and choked them to death. He remembered thinking it sounded barbaric, but poetically tragic, someone so in love they literally waste away without it being returned. He had never imagined it would happen to  _ him.  _ Not to him, Sylvain the playboy, who had an eye for all the ladies and most of the men, flirtatious smiles galore and sweet nothings aplenty for anyone who would listen. Sylvain didn’t fall in love. 

He looked around his old room from his position on the floor, feeling too weak from the vomiting and coughing to get back up just yet. There was an old photo box image on his windowsill and despite the five years of dust layering over the glass he knew exactly what the image was. It was him, and his closest friends, Dimitri, Ingrid and Felix, all smiling with their arms around one another. He remembered the day it had been taken, he has dragged them to the town to buy new weapon supplies, the promise of a new sword being the only reason Felix had tagged along, and he had cornered the photo box owner, handing him more gold than he would be willing to admit to take one of his images of them. The others hadn’t understood why he had wanted it, and he just explained it away with ‘ _ well when will the next time we meet someone like this be?’  _ but he had had a motive. He needed to be able to see them, to remember them, when they inevitably were lost on the field of battle. He had seen them all lose people. He had watched them all crumble like terracotta statues dried to clay as their family and friends dropped like flies, and he couldn’t hold all three of them tight enough to stop their pieces falling and shattering in ways he couldn’t gather back up and fix. He forced himself to stand, blowing a cloud of dust off the image, rubbing his thumb of Felix’s face under the glass, looking wistfully at the way he was smiling, his dark hair wisping around his face, one arm wrapped around Sylvain’s waist. It was one of the only times his smile had reached his eyes and light them up like lanterns, glinting and shining like the most beautiful thing in the world. Sylvain closed his eyes, hearing Felix’s laughter in his ears. Sylvain  _ did  _ fall in love, and it was with Felix Fraldarius. 

_ You’re the closest to heaven that I’ll ever be _

_ And I don’t want to go home right now  _

He remembered clearly the first time the petals fell from his lips. He had been riding his horse through Fraldarius territory, snow drifting like volcanic ash from the sky, settling on the already thick layer of it, adding extra crunchy to the horse’s steps. He needed to stop soon, before the chill wrapped around the horse’s limbs and cursed her to a hypothermic death. He was avoiding going home at any cost, there was too much bad blood there, soaked into the carpets and wallpapers, infected into every corner of the house. Portraits of ghosts hanging in the foyer, staring down at every who walked in with dead eyes. He ran a hand through his hair, blowing a strand that was tangling down and tickling at his nose. As he blew, a petal flew from his lips, a dusky purple velvet, a streak of yellow cutting down the middle. Felix caught the petal in his fist, and squeezed the life out of it. 

He knew of hanahaki, Ashe used to wax on about how it was so sad, yet so enchanting, how fate was a fickle mistress who played a cruel game. Felix didn’t find it so wonderful. Over the years of travelling around the cough plagued him further, and more and more frequently he found petals in his hands after succumbing to a coughing fit. He read more and more books on the disease, hoping to find a cure, but nothing helped. Everything just said to work out who it was that he was so desperately in love with. Felix didn’t need the help that the books could offer to know who he was so entrenched in love with the red string of fate coiled around his lungs and was crushing the life from him the more he denied it. Red was an apt colour for it too, it matched his hair and lips, because Sylvain Gautier was the man Felix was dying for. 

His time at the monastery, away from the rigmarole of his family’s manor, was the best time Felix had experienced in his lifetime, although he would  _ not  _ admit it to anyone. Whilst being in such close contact with Dimitri made him more and more on edge about the young prince’s mental state, it was the proximity to Sylvain that soothed him. Seeing his smile every morning as he came to class late, top shirt button left neglected during the summer months, hearing his laugh echo around the room as he tormented Ingrid and Annette. Felix wanted to be the one who made Sylvain laugh like that. Whenever he saw him with an arm around a girl, he wished he could push her aside and take her place, pressed to his chest, their lips together in a kiss that would make him rise onto his tiptoes, a kiss that would make his heart sing symphonies he hadn’t been privy to hear till then. Felix clicked his tongue at his horse before digging his heels into her side, urging her into a gallop as he reached the base of the hill that Garreg Mach was perched atop of. He remembered the promise they’d made as a class. To meet back there five years later, to see how everyone had grown. He wondered if Sylvain even remembered him. 

_ And all I can taste is this moment _

_ And all I can breathe is your life _

Sylvain looked like he had seen a ghost. In his defence, he thought he  _ had  _ done. All these years, he hadn’t heard from Felix once, and now he was here, honouring the promise they’d made as childish classmates, when there had been hope abundant in their hearts and glee in their eyes. When battles hadn’t been real, and deaths had been fake. Felix looked gaunt, face slim and eyes tired, with dark shadows dusting the soft skin under his eyes and Sylvain desperately wanted to run his thumb over the dusk, cup his cheek and pull him in for a kiss, but he knew it would end in a smack around the head and the end of their friendship. Instead, he settled with running over to Felix and barrelling into him for a crushing hug that made his lungs ache. 

“Felix, you’re alive.” He wheezed, burying his face in the shorter’s hair, inhaling the smell of pine needles and snow and feeling so perfectly at home. It was over in an instant though as his throat burned and he turned around, coughing viciously into two cupped hands, doubled over with the effort. 

“You don’t sound good.” Felix dropped his horse’s reins, the tack jingling as the mare swung her head in indignation but Felix ignored her, putting a hand on the middle of Sylvain’s back. “Have you seen a healer?” Sylvain shook his head, letting his hands fall away from his face, fully formed flowers resting in the palms. 

“None are here. It’s just me, Teach, and his highness.” Felix’s lip curled at the mention of Dimitri but he did nothing more, his attention taken by the flowers that looked remarkably similar to his own, despite being much further along. 

“Flowers?” He reached down, picking one from Sylvain’s grip, holding it delicately in his gloved fingers. “Sylvain, you know what flowers mea--”

“I know what it means Felix. It’s hanahaki, and it’s going to kill me. I’m aware.” There was venom in his tone that he hadn’t meant to be there, and he immediately regretted it. It wasn’t Felix’s fault. He couldn’t know how Sylvain felt, and even if he did, he never said anything, so he couldn’t feel the same back. “Hopefully I’ll see the war out.” He straightened up again with the help of the nearby wall, letting his head fall back to thud against the bricks. “Though if this keeps up, I don’t know if I’ll see the end of the week.” 

A cold ran through Felix as Sylvain spoke and he couldn’t tear his gaze from the iris in his hand, the petals beautifully crimped at the edges, curling over like the waves in Sylvain’s hair, the yellow splotch in the middle the colour of the sun that was shining it’s weak rays down on them, attempting to warm the cobbled ground. Sylvain had it too. Sylvain had it  _ worse.  _ Sylvain was going to die, and he couldn’t do anything about it. He felt a flutter in his own chest and he swallowed thickly, unwilling to show his own state. If Sylvain was going to die, he couldn’t show any weakness, as then Sylvain would feel bad for breaking their childhood promise to die together. It wasn’t like admitting to Sylvain he was sick too would help anything. If anything, it would make things worse. If he did, his flower would die, wither away at the satisfaction of Sylvain’s newfound knowledge, and he would live on for many more years, seeing the war out if all went well, but without Sylvain at his side. That wasn’t a life he decided was worth living. 

“Hey don’t look so down.” Sylvain snapped him out of his reverie and the wind stole the flower from his hand, whisking it away into the sky. “It could be worse, I could be dead already right?” Ever the jokester. Sylvain faked a smile, without knowing Felix could see the way it didn’t reach his eyes, leaving them dull despite the shining grin.

“Who is it?” He asked, ducking underneath one of Sylvain’s arms to support him, escorting him back up into his room. The dorms were eerily quiet, the air still and musty, and it made Felix feel uneasy. Even when he had snuck out of the dorms to train at night during school they hadn’t been this quiet. There had always been the sound of someone breathing, or snoring, someone turning pages in a book, and someone’s quill scratching parchment, frantically completing some work before the next morning. Sometimes the commoners snuck in to spend time with the noble’s, often Dorothea in Petra’s room, gossiping over boys, still awake when he crept back to bed nearing dawn. Sylvain let himself be helped, watching his feet the entire time they walked. Felix seemed to have a slight limp now, had he been injured? Sylvain cursed himself for not paying attention to where Felix had gone after the battle, thinking he should have followed him, protected him. 

“It doesn’t matter.” He muttered, pushing the door to his bedroom open and regretting the decision instantly. He hadn’t cleaned up the sheer amount of flowers he’d coughed up during the night, and it looked like someone had massacred a garden on his carpet.

“Did she die?” Felix asked softly, helping Sylvain to sit on his bed, trying but failing to not step on the flowers. That was all he could think of as a reason why Sylvain wouldn’t just  _ tell them  _ he loved them. Sylvain was so confident, so proud, he wouldn’t be scared of telling someone he loved them. He had done it before, he’d heard him, when he’d brought a girl back to his bedroom sometimes, he heard him telling her he loved her, and then heard her tears the next day. 

“No. He’s alive.” Sylvain coughed again, letting his tongue hang from his mouth as a petal tinged with blood was hacked up. “But he doesn’t love me. Telling him would…” he spat the petal to join the others on the floor, running both hands through his hair. “It wouldn’t fix anything. I can’t have him, he doesn’t love me. Living doesn’t have too much point at the moment anyway with the world in tatters.” He kicked his boots off and fall back onto the mattress with a thump. Felix blinked, and kicked him in the ankle, making him yelp. 

“What do you mean living doesn’t have much point? What about winning the war and putting the entire country back together? What about- what about me?” He fumbled over the words a little, surprised at Sylvain’s attitude. 

“What  _ about  _ you Felix?” Sylvain cracked one eye open, still laying back all nonchalant with his hands over his head, the way he was laying pulling his casual shirt up so Felix could see a line of his hip and stomach, and could see a dark red scar there, obviously rather fresh. Felix’s heart dropped, and he couldn’t help but reach out to touch, brushing his fingers over the new skin, watching the way Sylvain turned his face away from him.

“You’re not being careful are you, because of this?” Sylvain’s lack of answer was all the answer that he needed. “You’re willing to die in combat because you don’t have the balls to tell someone you’re in love with them?” He realised it was a bit rich, coming from him, and he reached into his pocket, pulling out a handkerchief he had haphazardly stitched into a little drawstring bag, in which he’d been keeping his own petals, in case some healer wanted to see them to try and  _ fix  _ him. “Guess I’ll have to lead by example.” Sylvain caught the small package, picking at the loose stitches to let the fabric fall open, a dried out iris sitting there in perfect form in the centre. 

“What’s this?” He knew what it was of course. He knew it meant Felix had it too. He knew it meant Felix was going to die as well, unless Felix told someone he loved them. It meant he had obviously waited too late to tell Felix, and had lost him to someone else. He gritted his teeth and fought the urge to turn the dried petals to dust, holding it back out to Felix. 

“It’s a flower, dumbass. A hanahaki flower. Because I’m in love with  _ you,  _ like I always have been. Of course, the only reason I’m telling you is because I’m trying to prove it isn’t that hard to just  _ tell someone,  _ and therefore not die from this stupid flower disease.” Felix ducked as he spoke, grabbing a handful of petals and throwing them at Sylvain in a rage. He was furious. Furious that Sylvain was willing to let himself die than just tell someone he loved them. What was the good in hiding it? Even if they didn’t love him back, surely living was worth it? Sylvain sat up as Felix spoke, the petals hitting him in the face, a few lodging in his hair. 

“You- wait. You  _ love  _ me?” Felix rolled his eyes, flicking Sylvain rather viciously on the nose. 

“That’s what I said isn’t it? The stupid disease caught me and has been trying to kill me for nigh on two years now, because I couldn’t find you to tell you I loved you. And then I decided not to because if you were going to die, then it wasn’t a world worth living in. But then finding out you’re just going to die out of stubbornness because you’re too afraid to tell someone about your feelings? I wanted to prove it isn’t as hard as you think it is. So get  _ over  _ yourself Gautier. Stop feeling sorry for yourself and pull yourself together! I don't want you to fucking die. I can't _let _you die! So grow some goddamn _balls _Gautier, and so tell that person you love them, so I don't have to watch you waste away and turn into flower food.” 

_ And sooner or later it’s over _

_ I just don’t want to miss you tonight _

Felix was cut off by Sylvain rising to his feet, and despite the fact there was only half a head between them it felt like Sylvain towered over him, like he just kept going on upwards forever. Felix followed his eyes, keeping eye contact as the sun outside shifted to shine through the window, Sylvain’s eyes a glowing ember of emotion he couldn’t quite place. Was it rage, rage at the fact Felix snapped and had called him names? Sylvain took a rather unsteady step towards him, and Felix’s hands moved quickly, pressing against his chest to help him regain balance. Sylvain moved again, this time pushing Felix back against the wall. Felix gulped, head cocking to the side. The smoldering gaze he was being stared down by made something stir in his stomach, and he breathed in. As if pulled in by Felix’s breath, Sylvain leant down, their lips meeting in a kiss he had indulged in night after night in fitful dreams. 

For the first time in years, Sylvain could breathe deeply. He could breathe in the old book smell of his bedroom, and despite the air being thick with damp, it was the best breathe he had ever taken. He breathed out again, feeling the warmth wash over Felix’s face, and he pressed their foreheads together, drowning in the molten caramel of Felix’s eyes. 

“It’s you. It’s always  _ been  _ you. I just… I didn’t think I was worthy of your love. That’s why I never told you. In all my wildest dreams it never once occurred to me that perhaps you could feel the same way.” Time stopped for Felix as he hear Sylvain speak, and he half expected himself to laugh, and then Sylvain would laugh, and it would all go away. Sylvain had to be joking. Sylvain didn’t move though, didn’t cough, didn’t wheeze, and Felix realised he was telling him the truth. Sylvain was telling him the utmost  _ truth.  _ Felix rose up on his tiptoes to crush their lips together again, and Sylvain let out a low moan, grabbing the backs of Felix’s thighs to lift him off the floor, pinning him between his chest and the wall. 

The night was filled with their panting and moaning, clothes strewn across the floor, hands roaming over muscled chests and backs, mutterings of  _ i love you  _ escaping kiss bruised lips as they both took advantage of the fact they could breathe, and they exchanged breath after breath, grabbing and pulling and whining. Felix arched his back under Sylvain’s touch, and Sylvain in return gasped Felix’s name. It was as if two pieces of a puzzle that had been apart were slotted together again, fitting perfectly in every way, matching up at all the broken lines and cross sections. Whilst Felix was the cool waves of an ocean, emotion ebbing and flowing with the movement of the moon, Sylvain was the burning sun, relentless and overpowering, but also suppressed by the slightest cloud in his way. They both passed out asleep under a heavy blanket as the sun crept below the horizon, sleeping without disturbance until the morning rays filtered through the murky glass.

_ And I don’t want the world to see me _

_ Cause I don’t think they’d understand _

On the battlefield, they were an inseparable team. Felix’s sword danced as Sylvain’s lance sung, moving left then right in perfect tandem, backs to one another to cover the weak spots. As they cleared through field after field, they heard rumours passing through the ranks. Rumours of the sole heirs of their respective kingdoms being  _ together,  _ as lovers, meaning the family line would discontinue. Neither cared about the rumours, because at the end of the day, they were true. What was there to pass on except for the crests neither had wanted, neither asked for, and neither particularly cared too much about? In Sylvain’s bedroom - that was technically now their shared one - at the monastery, a plant sat in a pot on the windowsill, flourishing in the milky light that bathed her, a delicate young iris that Sylvain babied with attention. Felix asked him about it once, why he chose to keep a flower that in truth, had nearly killed them both. Sylvain responded as he watered the plant, watching the way water droplets skated down the leaves to the base of the stem before sinking into the earth.

“Without them, we wouldn’t be where we are. Sure it wasn’t the most pleasant time, but without it, I wouldn’t be able to do this.” He turned, circling his arms around Felix’s waist, kissing his temple, and the sound of Felix’s laughter filled the room.

_ When everything’s made to be broken _

_ I just want you to know who I am _

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> aayyy so i hope i did this well, please follow me on twitter @nothinggoeshere and join the sylvix discord server using this link: https://discord.gg/rX8PBAz


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